The San Gabriel Valley Marches Eastward

Well, the Valley itself isn't moving, but the Chinese footprint is headed east. Besides from the spillover from Arcadia into Monrovia, as many observers have noted there's also a significant movement into West Covina. Most conspicuous is the opening of the large 85°C Café location last week in West Covina, which is so spacious compared to the original Irvine store that it doesn't even look crowded. And now, there's good authentic Chinese food in Covina, at Venus Cafe (apparently unrelated to the popular NorCal enterprises of the same name). The restaurant is relatively small and the menu is relatively short, but Yelpers say this is the real deal and based on my corn sauce fish dish, I'd have to agree. Venus Cafe is at 972 N. Grand Ave.

Yes, Hong Kong Market opened there almost 10 years ago, eventually turning what had been an American supermarket anchored shopping center into a Chinese-Indonesian center. The store went out of business in 2008 and the shopping center struggled for 2 years until HK 2 opened up in the space a couple of years ago.

After going the first few times, i began to notice inconsistencies in their taste/quality and selection. (70 types of bread? maybe, but only 15 types avail at any one visit) Their drinks (coffee and all) are mediocre even for asian standards.

That, and the other tw-style bakeries all updating their items to match the trends in tw/asia, make it so i rarely go to 85c now.

the coffee "drinks" border disgusting. the only redeeming value of 85C in China was the hot sea salt "latte". The cold sea salt latte tastes like someone dumped a teaspoon of maldon into stale coffee (and they are indeed stale, as all beans are purportedly shipped in from Taiwan)